Field of the Invention
This invention relates to improvements in backlit displays and more particularly to table top backlit displays which are especially well adapted for use in tradeshow display booths.
Description of the Prior Art
Thousands of tradeshows are held annually in the United States, at any one of which anywhere from about two score to hundreds of exhibitors display and promote their products. The format for such shows usually involves the assignment of spaces for exhibit booths which may be 10, 20 or 30 feet in width.
The purpose of the display booth is to provide a place in which vendors can promote their products, services, et cetera to the attendees who are attracted to the booths. To maximize the effectiveness of their efforts, exhibitors go to great lengths to provide attractive displays which draw potential customers thereto and away from their competitors. The most common attention capturing means utilized in display booths is to provide, at the backwall thereof, an exhibit that is unique, is bold in design, and most important, is highly visible.
The tradeshow display booth manufacturing industry is highly developed today. Scores of manufacturers provide light weight backwall units which can be set up in minutes for display thereon of, for example, photographic prints and/or Lexan.TM. copy panels of all sizes and colors.
Such backwall units commonly employ a flat surfaced panel which is covered with velvet loop-type fabric. The prints or copy panels to be displayed thereon have strips of hook-type fabric bound to the back surface thereof, and they can be firmly but removably attached to the aforementioned panel by simply pressing them onto the loop-type fabric in laminate relation thereto. Since the fabric face and the graphics mounted thereon are quite opaque, they must be illuminated. This is usually done by suspending spotlights above and in front of the panel, such spotlights being oriented for direction of the light therefrom downwardly and rearwardly toward the display.
In order to provide displays with improved attention-getting characteristics, two companies are presently marketing portable displays for ten foot booths which provide back lighting of a translucent fabric or film which bears an attention attracting image on the front face thereof. Both of these displays utilize an eight foot by ten foot rectangular frame of one inch square metal tubing. Mounted across the front of the frame of one of the displays referred to is a white Scanamural.TM. image bearing fabric, whereas the other type of display utilizes a photographic transparency mounted on a white display panel which extends across the front of the frame thereof.
The first mentioned of these backlit displays employs a silvered reflective fabric attached at its margins to the back of the tubular frame. This fabric is supported with its reflective surface in a concave shape, somewhat like a dome tent, by means of flexible supporting tubes carried by the frame. Mounted in generally centered relation within the dome-like fabric structure are a pair of high intensity halogen lamps oriented to direct their respective outputs toward the reflective surface of the fabric in opposite directions parallel with the image bearing plane. This display is not entirely satisfactory because the central portion of the image receives most of the light and the edges are poorly illuminated.
The other of the available displays aforementioned utilizes a box-like framing system which is about one foot deep. At the rear of this frame four dual fluorescent lamp fixtures are mounted in parallel relation about two feet apart. The lamps of each of these fixtures are parallel with each other and are spaced apart a distance of about three inches. These lamps are also parallel with the image bearing fabric. The sides and back of the frame are covered with aluminized reflective fabric. This type of display is also not entirely satisfactory, due to the fact that the wide spacing between the fixtures produces bright lines in the portions of the transparency image located immediately in front of said fixtures.
In addition to the fact that the described prior art displays exhibit less than desirable illumination of the graphics displayed thereby,they are relatively large. There is need for a backlit display for use in trade shows which is of a size adapted for table top use.